For these JC and MI students, receiving their results coincides with a pivotal choice that they will make in their lives. Prior to this point, making an independent decision about what to do with their lives has been rare. They may have to pick a secondary school after their Primary School Leaving Examination and/or choose among JCs and MI after their O-Level exams. However, this juncture is the first time that they have to pick a specialized path, one that will (for the most part) open the doors to a few jobs while simultaneously closing them for many others. The choice is a thorny one, with multiple criteria going into the decision arithmetic — family approval, cost of education, potential career options, passion for the subject, etc. However, if they do choose to continue their education, they will fall back into a familiar routine of structured learning, assessments, and grades.

For as long as we are enrolled in a school, we follow its set of rules, metrics, and schedules. Our performance is neatly packaged into a numerical score or a letter grade, published like clockwork at the end of every academic term. When we are students, these numbers often have an outsized impact on how we feel about ourselves and what we are worth. The power that these numbers have over us is not tied to its primary function, which is a proxy for our learning, but rather the larger mechanisms and narratives that it is embedded within. Education is an important tool for social mobility. In Singapore, the data shows that someone with higher qualifications generally earns a higher income. The power of school grades, therefore, lies in its ability to eventually lead to a life that bears the symbols of success. There is a saying in Chinese, “钱不是万能，但没钱万万不能”, which roughly translates into, “Money is not omnipotent, but without money, one cannot accomplish most things.” Singaporeans are known for such pragmatism, which has led to a national success narrative associating three things: good grades, good job, good life. It is unsurprising that after outsourcing our sense of achievement for most of our lives to numbers on a transcript, we hop onto yet another number to measure our success as adults — the amount of money we have. This leads people to think that, “As long as I score good grades, as long as I earn a lot of money — I will be successful and happy!” 

If only life is that simple. The narrative that achieving high numbers in grades and income automatically results in success is useful socioeconomically but does not paint the whole picture. We live in a world that requires the consumption of goods and services to keep economies running. Without a functioning economy, governments are not able to generate income from taxation that is required to run the state and protect its sovereignty. This necessitates a narrative that posits that the primary contribution that any average citizen makes to a nation-state is through production and consumption. Therefore, the feeling of success is not caused simply by earning loads of cash, but rather by what it means within such a narrative — being a productive member of society. It seems to me, therefore, that at the heart of our various pursuits is a deep longing for meaning and purpose. 

Meaning comes in many forms. It can be derived from doing something that we love or doing things for the people we love. An act can be considered meaningful if it affects people in positive ways. Meaning gives us a sense that we have purpose in this world. The difficult part is that sources of meaning and the balance among these various sources is different for everyone at different stages in their lives. There is simply no one-size-fits-all approach to having a meaningful life.

Sometimes I wonder if our reliance on extrinsic markers of achievement impedes our understanding of how we experience and create meaning. There is a lot to life beyond getting a job that pays the bills, so being able to make life judgments is a really important skill. Unlike the ones in tests, many questions in life do not have standard correct answers, neither is a majority approach necessarily the right one for an individual. One would have to evaluate and judge for themselves what is truly fitting for them before taking a leap of faith. No matter how much we know and how certain we are of our convictions, there will always be things that we cannot anticipate.

In life, when and how do we take stock? According to the Oxford dictionary, to take stock is to “review or make an overall assessment of a particular situation, typically as a prelude to making a decision.” I recently turned 30. A few days after my birthday, I got an email from the graduate school of my dreams. It says that I have not been accepted and that only 5% of all applicants were selected. I feel happy for those who made it into the program, their dreams live on. However, it is difficult to not feel slightly disappointed at this outcome because it feels at this particular moment that my efforts for the past few years (and if I were to be ludicrous, 30 years of my life) have amounted to nothing. It is easy to wallow in self-pity but it is more meaningful and constructive for me to pull myself together and consider my next steps. In times like these, I personally find it important to be grateful for the journey that I have made so far and the people who are a part of it. Our life stories are woven only in retrospect and I hope that someday, I will see this event as part of a larger unfolding of my life. Life goes on; there is a lot more life ahead of me and I am in for the ride.

Let me start by saying that this essay will adopt a somewhat unconventional structure. I will state upfront my position on a matter and get toward that destination through a process of elimination. If that sounds like an ignorant student attempting to answer a multiple-choice question by a process of elimination because he is unsure, well yes — today, that student is me.

The topic for today is an individual’s capacity for change. This reminds me of an assignment that I did for my philosophy professor, Prof. James Yess, when we were discussing the topic of free will vs determinism. We were challenged with describing our position with six words, as a sort of homage to Hemingway’s six-word story. I wrote something along the lines of, “Freer — but not free — will exists.” My position here is that of a compatibilist, in short, I believe that individual agency can exist alongside determinism. As it relates to today’s topic, I believe that an individual should only be judged based on the things that they can reasonably change about themselves.

Let us begin by first unpacking the term “self”. We can think of the self from a first-person perspective: a physical body that can be moved by our volition and a conscious mind that thinks, imagines, and remembers, among many other mental actions. Between the false dichotomy of mind and body, we have senses that can receive and interpret external stimuli, feelings that can experience the greatest joy and deepest sadness, and beliefs that seem so deeply ingrained in ourselves that they seem like second nature. Then there are aspects of ourselves that we are often unaware of — the unconscious mind. Before we go through this laundry list to evaluate which elements of the self are more changeable, let us quickly discuss why we would consider changing ourselves in the first place.

If we lived in a world where we were the only human being, we probably did not need to change ourselves that much, with the exception of learning behaviors that prevent physical pain, increase sensorial pleasure and ensure survival by meeting our bodily needs. If we had an anger management problem in such a world, we may not be motivated to change because acting on it may not yield much negative impact. Perhaps we may hurt ourselves if we punched a rock — in which case we may change mainly to minimize pain, as mentioned earlier, but not to address the anger. Fortunately in our reality, no man is an island — we live in an interconnected society that is filled with rich social relationships, where individual acts can have social outcomes. Humans are social creatures and our relationships are very meaningful to us. Therefore, on top of the aforementioned reasons for change, we also try to prevent emotional pain and increase psychological wellness, not just on an individual level but expanded to a wider social dimension. The earlier example of an anger management issue would have more serious consequences due to the potential to harm others. The person would also be more pressured to change due to socioemotional mechanisms of guilt and shame. Many of our personal behavioral changes, therefore, can be traced to our desire to be good for our society.

Now, back to the laundry list – which of the previously stated aspects of the self are we more able to change? Alterations made to the body are commonplace in certain areas of the world and to specific groups of people. However, in general, it is something that is not easily changed. Procedures can be painful, expensive, and sometimes even endanger a person’s life. I guess this is why judging anyone based on how they look feels wrong. Next, the unconscious mind is usually out-of-reach to us unless we seek psychoanalytic intervention, which often requires professional help. It is important to note, however, that the psychoanalytic definition of the unconscious is still debated to this day. If we take the cognitive definition of the unconscious and extend it to the realm of implicit cognitive biases and heuristics (as pioneered by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky), we can counteract some of these automatic processes through conscious compensation. Therefore, we find ourselves in the realm of conscious thought and feeling, which includes sense perception, emotion (a.k.a. affect), cognition, and belief. By definition, we are aware of our consciousness, which makes it the most actively changeable aspect of our self relative to the previous two (i.e. body and unconscious).

We are aware of our sense perceptions, but they are generally unchanged by conscious thought. We can, however, compensate for perceptual illusions by being aware of them. Emotions, especially intense ones like anger and grief, can sometimes be felt viscerally, but they can be regulated through thought. Our emotions often come from our interpretation of certain events that occur in our life. The area of practical philosophy, which aims to aid people in living “wiser, more reflective lives,” has been a central part of philosophers’ work since Laozi and Socrates and likely predates them. Hence, even if we feel strongly about something that happened to us, we are able to respond in a measured way, sometimes by reframing the experience in different ways.

Cognition refers to the mental activities involved in acquiring knowledge and understanding. It can be strengthened through various thinking tools and approaches that we learn and then employ to solve problems and make decisions. It is probably one of the most changeable parts of our mind, as seen from the huge investments that societies around the world put into educating people, especially the young, to read, write and do arithmetic. Based on the World Bank’s figures, we spent around 4.53% of global GDP, equivalent to US$3.68 trillion ($3,682,348,740,000), on education in 2017. Generally speaking, someone who has a better understanding of how the world works should be able to behave in a way that benefits themselves and their society. They may also be in a position that helps them understand complex, strategic, and long-term decisions that require trade-offs, compromises, and short-term sacrifices. Therefore, learning — specifically the acquisition of knowledge and skills — remains to be a powerful force for both personal improvement and social mobility.

Writer’s note: I realized that this topic cannot be adequately discussed in a single 1000-word essay. Click here for part 2.